👉 The Investing Week Ahead: $500M+ Portfolio Overnight

As always — we don’t like to chase meme stocks because we have no idea what’s going to happen and GameStop’s financials don’t warrant a valuation that high.

GameStop’s net income was $6.7 million for fiscal year 2023. At the time of writing this — the market cap of the company is around $12 BILLION.

That’s comically stupid. HOWEVER — it’s pretty incredible to see the power of retail investors. They are going to talk about this stuff in financial history books. Fun to watch and happy for those that are making money!

What We’re Watching:

CrowdStrike (+22.6% YTD) is set for a highly anticipated earnings release on Tuesday — with many analysts having an optimistic outlook for the quarter.

Partly due to its many competitive advantages in the cybersecurity space — CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform excels in endpoint protection with cloud-scale AI for real-time threat detection and automated response.

Its lightweight agent and threat intelligence capabilities set a new benchmark in security — allowing enterprises to prevent breaches with a unified solution. Enhancements like cloud workload protection, identity protection, and log management further solidify CrowdStrike's market leadership.

Morgan Stanley said it sees the cybersecurity firm topping a $100B valuation over the next 12 months and "nearly doubling" in the next four to five years.

Lululemon (-38.9% YTD) will release its first quarter results on Wednesday — with investors begging for positive news after being one of the worst performing S&P 500 stocks of the year. 

The company has faced sluggish sales and was forced to lay off hundreds of employees earlier this year — shutting down a major distribution center.

“We are pleased with the strong finish to our 2023 fiscal year and continue to be ahead of our Power of Three ×2 strategy. During the fourth quarter, we saw continued momentum across our channels, geographies, and merchandise categories, driven by our teams around the world. As we step into 2024, we are focused on the significant opportunities ahead for Lululemon as we navigate the dynamic retail environment and deliver for guests through innovative new products and brand activations.” 

— Calvin McDonald, Lululemon CEO during the company’s last earnings report

Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang already had his keynote speech over the weekend, sharing some of big time statements:

For reference on the last statement above — the GDP of the United States in 2023 is estimated to have been about 26.1 trillion. Jensen Huang talking about $100 trillion can be taken as extremely forward-looking, or potentially could be considered over-speaking.

Who cares? This is a personal finance and investing newsletter!

That’s true — the reason it’s interesting is because folks like Bill Ackman are curious about the money side of things. There’s speculation that scientists made $710M in royalties from major drug makers throughout the pandemic.

Based on how this Congressional appearance goes — there could be some serious news related to companies like Pfizer (PFE), Moderna (MRNA), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), and more.

With how BIG Walmart does their annual meetings + the consistent news about the company that keeps surfacing — we’ll be checking in on this week’s event.

What We’re Watching:

The ISM Manufacturing PMI in the U.S. fell to 49.2 in April 2024, indicating an ongoing contraction in the sector.

The ISM Manufacturing PMI is expected to rise slightly to 49.6 in this week’s reading.

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 3.9% in April 2024 — up from 3.8% the previous month.

The median forecast for this week’s release is for the unemployment rate to hold steady at 3.9% and non-farm payrolls are expected to come in at 178,000.